Messages

one logo, coming up:

goregeous image!

If you don't mind, I'm going to print out a bunch and put them on trees in the park.

I don't think it was dumb. It's just that shitflinging games are typical here. If you can't stand up to some abuse, you're probably not going to have a very good time. In general, it helps weed out shitty ideas and people who can't back up what they say.

also:

Oh, and you're not being recieved very well because nobody here treats eris as anything but a metaphor.  It's not a legitimate religion, for god's sake.

While I agree with what you said,
quit speaking for everybody

Hi Calendula! Welcome to PD.

Don't get intimidated by postcounts or haters or whatever. There's choppy waters here. As a new Discordian, I don't expect that you've got it all figured out. (And I think a lot of us could probably benefit from your "beginner's mind") So don't get discouraged by people telling you you're doing it wrong.

we used to have a member named Hunter (who's been missing for a few months) who greeted every single new member with a sincere "Fuck You, go away". Others have upheld this tradition in his absence.



Anyway, there's tons of stuff going on here. In particular, check out the Operation: Mindfuck board, and the OMGASM subforum.

yeah, and feel free to mirror/repost anything we wrote

Keep slapping yourselves, I haven't told you to finish yet.

Dear Advice Puppy,

When can I stop?

GAD DAMNIT I'M AT WORK NOW

AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, ADVICE PUPPY


WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?

Ah, I see...

I'll see what I can to do fix it, but I don't have access to the ftp right now. 

for now, try right click -> block image?

pupppy noooooooooooooooo


I need your advice!


I CANNOT MAKE DECISIONS FOR MYSELF

Advice Puppy:

Will I get in trouble if I just don't go to work today?

Is it the "Choose Your Own Misadventure" logo?

please clarify how it obscures the text? 'cause it looks fine on my screen.

you could paperclip them to posters

let people know how to get in on the madness

[Regarding advertising:]

sorry I've been absent from the project.. Recently I itemized the list of projects I'm working on and there were 13 items on it. So I've been kind of tied up. I'd say keep page 5, let's just build off it, but New Authors: try to keep that thread it kind of narrow. (x-link threads to create a PLOT-BRAID) That way we won't end up with more than 16 or so pages to write.

I think the plan is to "finish" this book (or maybe 90% of the possible endings), and then start a new one.


Regarding advertising:

Yes, begin inviting people. But hold off on submitting stuff to digg and stumbleupon and whatever... we should think about that separately.

We could use more graphic media. And video media.

Regarding the site itself:

Everyone look at the first few pages - do you think we're ready for people to come in? Do we need more explanation? more graphics? more jokes? how can we encourage people (each other included) to participate, rather than just read? Is it good now?

BUT WHAT IF THE PARTICIPANT WAS A GRRRRL?


seriously, I would have lost points if I didn't say "his or her" and "he or she"

[Taleb's top life tips]

“The only way you can say ‘Fuck you’ to fate is by saying it’s not going to affect how I live. So if somebody puts you to death, make sure you shave.” -Taleb

Here's an article I found on our boy Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article4022091.ece?print=yes&randnum=1212675666154

It's a good insight into Taleb, and documents a few of his mannerisms and habits. Here are some good quotes:

Startlingly, this great sceptic, this non-guru who believes in nothing, is still a practising Christian. He regards with some contempt the militant atheism movement led by Richard Dawkins.

“Scientists don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about religion. Religion has nothing to do with belief, and I don’t believe it has any negative impact on people’s lives outside of intolerance. Why do I go to church? It’s like asking, why did you marry that woman? You make up reasons, but it’s probably just smell. I love the smell of candles. It’s an aesthetic thing.”

Take away religion, he says, and people start believing in nationalism, which has killed far more people. Religion is also a good way of handling uncertainty. It lowers blood pressure. He’s convinced that religious people take fewer financial risks.

This quote is pretty much directly from the Black Swan, and summarizes Taleb's opinion on eggheads.

For the non-mathematician, probability is an indecipherably complex field. But Taleb makes it easy by proving all the mathematics wrong. Let me introduce you to Brooklyn-born Fat Tony and academically inclined Dr John, two of Taleb’s creations. You toss a coin 40 times and it comes up heads every time. What is the chance of it coming up heads the 41st time? Dr John gives the answer drummed into the heads of every statistic student: 50/50. Fat Tony shakes his head and says the chances are no more than 1%. “You are either full of crap,” he says, “or a pure sucker to buy that 50% business. The coin gotta be loaded.”

The chances of a coin coming up heads 41 times are so small as to be effectively impossible in this universe. It is far, far more likely that somebody is cheating. Fat Tony wins. Dr John is the sucker. And the one thing that drives Taleb more than anything else is the determination not to be a sucker. Dr John is the economist or banker who thinks he can manage risk through mathematics. Fat Tony relies only on what happens in the real world.

The central point is that we have created a world we don’t understand. There’s a place he calls Mediocristan. This was where early humans lived. Most events happened within a narrow range of probabilities – within the bell-curve distribution still taught to statistics students. But we don’t live there any more. We live in Extremistan, where black swans proliferate, winners tend to take all and the rest get nothing – there’s Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and a lot of software writers living in a garage, there’s Domingo and a thousand opera singers working in Starbucks. Our systems are complex but over-efficient. They have no redundancy, so a black swan strikes everybody at once. The banking system is the worst of all.

“Complex systems don’t allow for slack and everybody protects that system. The banking system doesn’t have that slack. In a normal ecology, banks go bankrupt every day. But in a complex system there is a tendency to cluster around powerful units. Every bank becomes the same bank so they can all go bust together.”

Taleb on investing your money:

And you and me? Well, the good investment strategy is to put 90% of your money in the safest possible government securities and the remaining 10% in a large number of high-risk ventures. This insulates you from bad black swans and exposes you to the possibility of good ones. Your smallest investment could go “convex” – explode – and make you rich. High-tech companies are the best. The downside risk is low if you get in at the start and the upside very high. Banks are the worst – all the risk is downside. Don’t be tempted to play the stock market – “If people knew the risks they’d never invest.”

good quote on human nature:

“Let’s be human the way we are human. Homo sum – I am a man. Don’t accept any Olympian view of man and you will do better in society.”

and finally,

Taleb's top life tips

1 Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

2 Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.

3 It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

4 Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.

5 Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.

6 Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.

7 Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).

8 Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.

9 Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

10 Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.